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Workshops
Workshop for Issue 47
Mslexia 2010 Women's Poetry Competition
Try these exercises in serendipity.
» Visit a bookshop; close your eyes and select a book at random. Turn to page 100 and write down three phrases that intrigue or attract you from that page. Use them as the basis of a poem.
» Go to a museum; wander in any direction, but count your steps. When you reach 100, focus on the nearest exhibit. To establish its physical reality, describe it as accurately as you can. Now think of it as a metaphor – for loss, envy, coldness, anger. Rewrite your description of the object as a poem, incorporating the metaphor.
Devised by Margaret Wilkinson
◊ Closing date : 26 July 2010 ◊ Competition guidelines
From the Mslexia Workshops Collection
July's Workshop
3 minutes
An exercise in image production
>> Don't be fooled by this exercise: it's no silly parlour game. The idea is to produce unusual noun-adjective combinations to rev the imagination.
>> Follow these instructions carefully: Take a lined A4 sheet and fold it lengthways. With the fold to the left write a list of mouns down the folded edge. When you've done that, turn over and write a list of adjectives, again down the folded edge (to your right).
Don't think too hard: either pluck words out of the air at random, or choose an image or topic from your novel/poem from which to create the list of nouns. For instance, if your subject is trees, you might choose 'root,' 'branch,' 'sap,' 'canopy,' 'acorn.' Keep adjectives open – 'flat,' 'cold,' 'hard,' 'curly,' 'bereft' (abstract adjectives produce interesting results).
>> Open the page up to reveal your list of word combinations. Out of 25, pick three that have a charge. Unpack the images to achieve a fresh perspective, or a way into a piece of writing.
This workshop first appeared in issue 17 of Mslexia.
Workshops collection
Plunder our selection of writing workshops for inspiration:
Inspirations
FEATURE
Beginnings: make us hungry for more, led by Bernardine Evaristo
WRITING YOURSELF
Explore the unconscious and turn your life into literature
Signing off
The journey home
FIRST DRAFT
In which a published author compares a segment of her book to an earlier draft, dicussing how - and why - she made her editing choices.
Charlotte Mendelson's First Draft
Clare Jay's First Draft
MAKING A POEM
Kate Clanchy interviews fellow poets about the process of writing a selected poem.
Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch
Penelope Shuttle
More…